Dodge volume test on lift pump/won't honor warranty

[SPickett]

yeah that is my last resort. just started the process so hope it works out.
Your probably right, the sub vibrated the pump too much causing to to unbalance and not pump properly.

 

[RVTRKN]

If you lose in small-claims, superior court will be too expensive for what you can claim and is the sad part of our justice system. I've been there before with a piece of property I was trying to buy when the owner would not release my deposit after he trashed the house. But as far as your truck being modded, if they didn't say anything at the time then too bad for Dodge. I'm a believer in "you play you pay" but that is not the case, in your situation. I don't understand why they refused warranty when they need any income they can get at this time, and would say its time they fire their service manager.



Good luck.

 

[JHMiller]

I to hope you get some satisfaction in court. I stopped short of that and decided to cut my losses with Prestige Dodge in Longmont. Pretty soon you'll start receiving the "Our records show your about out of warranty, hurry and buy our extended warranty, so you can have piece of mind that your truck will be expertly cared for". Kinda makes you want to spend billions of tax dollars saving a rat outfit like Dodge, doesn't it?

Do keep us posted on the court thing..... John

 

[SPickett]

You're attempting to commit fraud by removing the electronic box before taking the truck in to the dealer for warranty repairs but you are very angry and accusing your dealer of what you describe as "lied to me. "



Do you see anything odd about your standards for your own behavior compared to the standards you expect the dealer to meet?

actually what I said is it is no longer on my truck. As in it isn't on my truck. Updating my signature on TDR is about the last thing I'm going to waste my time on. I have kids and a wonderful life. I try to focus on that not if the by-line on my truck is accurate or not. But thanx for trying to be my moral compass. Don't worry tho, next time I need you to I will ask.

 

[HBarlow]

yeah that is my last resort. just started the process so hope it works out.
Your probably right, the sub vibrated the pump too much causing to to unbalance and not pump properly.

The process you are talking about, filing a claim against the dealer, is what some might describe as urinating into the wind. It will end up costing you far more than the bill to replace the lift pump would have cost you.

If you had taken your truck to another dealer and paid for a lift pump replacement and filed a claim with a receipt you would have had a chance of recovering but successfully demanding a partial reimbursement for an expensive aftermarket system is as likely as waiting for the Easter bunny.

You can't claim the pump was bad with credibility because you purchased a more expensive aftermarket system instead of replacing the lift pump. You also can't claim poor or need because of the same reason.

Many people don't realize that talking among your buddies about sueing someone often makes a person feel better but in reality, money talks and bs walks.

I don't know about your state but in many states you can choose to represent yourself in small claims court, or you can have an attorney represent you. If you file suit against an automobile dealership I hope you don't expect the dealer principal and the service manager to show up to defend their position. They will simply send a lawyer to represent the dealership. Any attorney who got his law license earlier than last week will tie you in knots and make you look foolish if the facts are on his side, which they are. If all the facts are on your side and you have clear and convincing evidence to support your claim, which is not the case, the attorney will simply request delays, postponments, rescheduled appearances, until he beats you down.

Take a deep breath and realize that you may have run into a stupid service tech or service manager who should have known the lift pump was covered under warranty or maybe they simply didn't agree with you that the lift pump was bad, but when you went out and bought an expensive aftermarket system instead of a Dodge lift pump, any case you MAY have had went out the window.

 

[SShafranko]

Did your symptoms go away after your Fass was installed? If so than i don't blame you for not replacing your pump with another crap pump even if it was free. As for taking them to court i would do it in a heart beat even if i knew i was going to loose. You can represent your self and the only thing you have to loose is some time. Let their lawyers rack up a bill which will equal to replacing 50 lift pumps so that they may learn a lesson the next time someone else comes in with the same problem, which i'm sure they have. It was documented that you were there before your warranty was up. And keep postponing it because every time you do it will cost the dealership four lift pump replacements.



PS There is no way the sub caused your problem. It was the liquid cooled amp. It sends a signal to the crap pump to stop working once the amp is at normal operating temperature.

 

[TimothyLong]

I have been following this thread with interest mainly to see the varied opinions on the matter. The consensus seems to be that it is a fairly shady practice on the part of Dodge to perform ONLY a volume test for lift pump warranty claims. While this is pretty sad, it is nothing new. I recall seeing similar postings on here when I first got my '98. 5 2nd gen. One posting referred to an article published in one of the 4x4 / off road rags about this very thing. The article documented the case that caused then Daimler/Chrysler to issue the notorious memo (that all of us are familiar with) to all dealers that D/C will not warranty ANY engine / drivetrain components that have after market modifications that fall outside of Dodge performance specs (or something like that) unless it could be proven that the performance modifications did not cause the failure (which is almost impossible to do in a lot of cases). In essence, the lift pump volume test that Dodge puts on their diagnostic sheet does two things. First it allows Dodge to supply inferior lift pumps that will incur customer out of pocket expenses vice warranty work (sort of like the ball joint thing). Secondly, short of a complete lift pump failure, it provides Dodge with a way to deny warranty work on the inferior parts a majority of the time. Pretty darned slick!



SPickett, I can't say one or the other if you have a good case to hear in small claims court or not. But I am pretty sure that if you do win, you will probably only recover a portion of your out of pocket expenses. Hey, it's better than nothing! If you do decide to go that route, I have a story that you may find inspirational. I don't know about Colorado, but in Maryland private individuals are not required to have an attorney to have a case brought before the small claims court, but companies are and you can file the claim in any jurisdiction, not just the one where the incident occurred. A number of years ago, my boss bought a Ford Mustang from one of the local thieves... I mean dealers. In the first several months, he had some problems with it and took it back numerous times for repair, none of which seemed to help but all were outside of warranty repairs (this was prior to the "Lemon Law"). Eventually, he took the car to another mechanic (one that he knew and trusted) and got the car properly repaired. As it turns out, the final repair was indeed a warranty item. So he went back to the dealer to reclaim his expenses and as you would expect they blew him off. So he filed a suit against the dealer in the county where he lives (just outside of Washington, D. C. and the dealer was located north of Baltimore, MD). On court day, he said the dealer's attorney, service manager, and the technician who worked on his car all showed up. He lost the suit only because he did not provide an expert witness to testify on his behalf. Afterward, he walked out of the court room and across the hall to the window where you could file an appeal. So he was standing there in line to file his appeal when the crew from the dealer emerged from the court room all happy and high-fiving each other. At this point he hollered across the hall to them, "Hey, boys... !", and pointed to the window that said "APPEALS" on it. He said they went from being all happy and such to immediately getting the "deer in the headlights" look. Less than a week later, he received a check from the dealer for the total cost of the settlement. I don't recall the exact amount he sued for, but it was close to, if not a little over a grand. The only reason he got the check was because it was going to cost the dealer way more in salaries, attorney fees, and court fees to go to court a second time (and have a good chance of loosing anyway) than it was to pay the settlement outright. My boss didn't have to be Perry Mason, all he had to do was know a few basic things about how to use the court system to his advantage. I'm not saying that this will work for you too, but it might give you a few ideas. Either way, I wish you luck with however you decide to proceed!

 

[Bob4x4]

I see many opinions and emotions running around in this thread with very little fact.

What is written on the repair order?

Volume testing is a very accurate test of the fuel systems capacity. Mother Cummins uses it exclusively and that spec is what will hold up in court. What was the concern that was written on the repair order?What was written on the final copy you received after you paid your bill?

Having no cat and a fueling box would be enough for a Chrysler inspector to NOT authorize the repair in the first place on a warranty claim. Again you have still not answered my question if you told Corporate what mods were done to the truck... ... .....



Bob

 

[Bob V]

VOLUME means a whole lot more than pressure. Pressure is resistance to flow, a pump by itself WILL NOT make pressure, you MUST have resistance to flow. Think of your garden hose with a nozzle on the end. When it is closed the pressure is highest but NO FLOW. Now open it up, pressure goes down and flow (volume) goes up. Is it pressure or volume that will water you lawn? What your pump needs is Volume. The reason they don't use pressure is that there are too many variables that will change the reading.

 

[Bob4x4]

I think SPicket is not being honest:-laf

An earlier post from him





"sounds almost exactly as the issues I had with my 05. Lift pump was bad and ruined all six injectors.

__________________

Oil field trash and proud!

2005 SRW 3500Quad cab, S & B cold air stage 2 intake, straight piped, Edge EZ module, Infinity 12' sub and MTX liquid cooled amp, black Unique rims w/BFG All Terrain 315/70s, topper w/rack KC lights and 2 high lift jacks. "

 

[SPickett]

I think SPicket is not being honest:-laf

An earlier post from him





"sounds almost exactly as the issues I had with my 05. Lift pump was bad and ruined all six injectors.

__________________

Oil field trash and proud!

2005 SRW 3500Quad cab, S & B cold air stage 2 intake, straight piped, Edge EZ module, Infinity 12' sub and MTX liquid cooled amp, black Unique rims w/BFG All Terrain 315/70s, topper w/rack KC lights and 2 high lift jacks. "

Wow really? would you just go away. i did indeed answer your post a while ago but you did not take the time to read it. As for the quote above, yeah I said that. The dealership did replace every one of my injectors under the warranty. They insisted they just all magically went bad.



To everyone: on the issue of volume testing I do feel that they use it to get around replacing the pump. Take note of the fact that I have repeatedly asked them to tell me what level of measurement they use and they my pump test to. They will not tell me.



I had the fass pump put in with my own money after they made it obvious they were not going to help me. After they replaced the injectors my truck still ran like crap. Slightly better crap but crap. After having the fass pump put in she runs like a dream.



As for court I don't know what I will do. If it is obvious that dodge will not do what I feel is right, and it is worth it I will file in small claims court. If I don't think it is worth it I won't.



I posted on here because I wanted to get advice or perhaps first hand experience from other people. Some have been helpful and thank you for that.



Others, such as Bob 4x4 seem unaware that the entire purpose of TDR is to share a love of cummins engines and provide help and community to all of us. I guess some people just can't stop being hatters and a pain in the ***. To be honest I would delete this entire thread if I could and do not plan to post in it again as I'm tired of the annoyance of people like him.



Oh and in the end, my truck runs great now, is out of warranty so I never have to step foot in the dealership again, and doubt I would buy a dodge again. This is my second one in 4 years. Just wish the cummins came in a roomy comfortable Ford lol.

 

[sag2]

I didn't mean to be a smart A, but in your first post you claimed that the proper procedure to test was a pressure test, implying you know more than the technician. As stated, and confirmed by a factory TSB and the Cummins warranty fuel test sheet, the only test Chrysler uses is a volume test. So I was just stating facts that you do not know what your talking about when it comes to lift pump diagnosis. Now for the dealers part, he should have known the lift pump was covered so he didn't know what he was talking about. So I still stand by my statement that you and the dealer didn't know what they were talking about.

As for your problem and the fix, I can't imagine any technician, even a stupid one installing six injectors (about $3200. 00 warranty cost to Chrysler) if the lift pump didn't pass a volume test. Call the dealer and ask them for the specs, they were probably recorded on the repair order. So even if they had known the LP was covered, you diagnosed it as bad, not them, and I'm still betting they performed a volume test before putting in the injectors.

And finally, you should feel extremely lucky that you have six new injectors in your truck, especially when they were probably bad from fuel or water contamination in the first place. I wouldn't want to spend $1000 on my truck any more than you, but looks to me like for $1000 you got a fresh set of injectors and an upgraded fuel system at 100,000 miles. The alternative was a new free lift pump, and a stuck injector at 105,000 miles that scored a cylinder that cost YOU $12,000 to fix.

 

[HBarlow]

SPickett,

Next time you want to post asking for "advice and first hand experience" from other TDR members you should ask for only those who agree with you to post, even when you are wrong. That way you can be sure that no one will disagree with your statements.

 

[DNordvik]

A Cummins engine in a Ford does not solve all the problems. I have a 2007 Ford F650 5. 9 Cummins. At 90,000 miles I just paid Cummins North central to replace lift pump for the 4th time. They also relocated the pump to the frame. When i still had warranty they would only replace it in the original location. The lift pump problems are more of a Cummins problem than a Dodge or Ford problem. All brands have issues. For me Dodge has less problems than any other brand.

 

[biggy238]

On the technical side of this, and because i'm suspicious of my lift pump at times,



There is no flow without pressure differential. Pressure IS the force that acts on the media being transfered. (unless its gravity fed or centrifugal, and even these two are creating pressure fields)

And, ofcourse, pressure is the resistance to flow in a system.



Now, this is not to say that you haven't created a low pressure field (opening your garden hose) or, if your lift pump isn't really pumping, but atmospheric pressure is forcing fuel into the inlet of the CP3 because the CP3 is creating a low pressure field.



In this instance, you would need to record BOTH flow and pressure in order to spec out pump performance (power).



You also would have recordable flow, but no pressure in the system.



You would essentially be feeding your CP3 with a flooded suction system.





My thoughts on the rest. If you have a warranty claim on a vehicle just short of coverage experation, park that POS on their lot and then sort things out.

Otherwise, tow it wherever it has to go after that point. If you win you claim with the dealer, depending on how the coverage is worded, they should have to pay the tow bill.

 

[Bob4x4]

In this instance, you would need to record BOTH flow and pressure in order to spec out pump performance (power).



You also would have recordable flow, but no pressure in the system.

Since the system has a known restriction the flow test is all that is needed

Since we don't know what the customers concern written on the repair order was or what the dealer wrote on the repair order it is all just hearsay anyway

I PMed the original poster and he basicly told me to go fly a Kite but in a much cruder fashion :-laf

There is more to this story

 

[RVTRKN]

BOB4X4, Sometimes you express your concerns to the service writer and he/she can omit certain statements. One example in my case was the Vent Door issue, at 15K and one year into the warranty. I had maintenance performed and I complained at the time about smelling diesel fumes when in recirculation mode climbing grades from the semi trucks and also the AC on the passenger side seemed not to perform as well as the driver side. I was told that the newer trucks had a built in fresh air system due to the new airtight cabs that were now being built and there is a TSB on the AC issue due to under charged systems for that MY. I believed him because I'm an HVAC contractor and fresh air is a requirement for commercial applications as well as new home building codes. (in some areas) The AC condenser had to be replaced, reinforcing what the service writer had told me. So I ignored the smell when climbing grades, the odor was not that bad. After 50K miles the odor became bad enough for my wife to complain all the way up the grades and was now complaining about it when driving behind a semi on flat surfaces. Knowing about the vent door issue from TDR and that I had a factory extended warranty, I complained to the same service writer about my concerns, and to have the vent door checked. Well, his next statement from him was "your extended warranty does not cover it". So did he say "oh ya, thats right, you complained at 15K and don't worry it will be covered". It cost me $500. 00 for the repair. This was after a tech confirmed to him that there is no fresh air forced into the cab, that there are a small set of vents behind the cab for atmospheric pressure relief.



So it is possible, it happened the way SPickett described, that the service writer ignored him, and it should be a lesson to all, to make sure the service writer records it, and you need to look at your written estimate prior to paying the invoice or signing it whichever is necessary, that it states just that. It would of saved me $500. 00 possibly, because there would have been a written record of the first complaint. BTW' no more smells from the semi's now, and the AC is a lot better, that has never been the case before, with 50K+ miles.

 

[TCDiesel]

The flow test will work if done Properly, Here is a Picture of our Dual Factory Pumps, I have tested the Both Single and Dual Pressure and Volume. if the Pressure is 10psi with Both pumps it will produce 110 GPH @ I turned the valve to create 4psi and it Pump 105 GPH Both times was 10 minute duration with new filter installed. So I did 1 pump for 10 minutes, Guess what @10 psi 50 GPH @ 4psi 50 GPH. The CP3 does not need any type of pressure, it needs Volume. Now to go to the extreme Yes you may gain some HP @ 20psi or higher but you will need to be in the 650 range to get any benefit.



NEVER LEAVE THE DEALERSHIP WITHOUT DOCUMENTATION, Demand it from the service writer. they may claim it's warranty work, but demand it any ways, If they say it's not necessary call the Local police. I am sure He or She will document your concerns.

 

[Bob4x4]

BOB4X4, Sometimes you express your concerns to the service writer and he/she can omit certain statements. One example in my case was the Vent Door issue, at 15K and one year into the warranty. I had maintenance performed and I complained at the time about smelling diesel fumes when in recirculation mode climbing grades from the semi trucks and also the AC on the passenger side seemed not to perform as well as the driver side. I was told that the newer trucks had a built in fresh air system due to the new airtight cabs that were now being built and there is a TSB on the AC issue due to under charged systems for that MY. I believed him because I'm an HVAC contractor and fresh air is a requirement for commercial applications as well as new home building codes. (in some areas) The AC condenser had to be replaced, reinforcing what the service writer had told me. So I ignored the smell when climbing grades, the odor was not that bad. After 50K miles the odor became bad enough for my wife to complain all the way up the grades and was now complaining about it when driving behind a semi on flat surfaces. Knowing about the vent door issue from TDR and that I had a factory extended warranty, I complained to the same service writer about my concerns, and to have the vent door checked. Well, his next statement from him was "your extended warranty does not cover it". So did he say "oh ya, thats right, you complained at 15K and don't worry it will be covered". It cost me $500. 00 for the repair. This was after a tech confirmed to him that there is no fresh air forced into the cab, that there are a small set of vents behind the cab for atmospheric pressure relief.



So it is possible, it happened the way SPickett described, that the service writer ignored him, and it should be a lesson to all, to make sure the service writer records it, and you need to look at your written estimate prior to paying the invoice or signing it whichever is necessary, that it states just that. It would of saved me $500. 00 possibly, because there would have been a written record of the first complaint. BTW' no more smells from the semi's now, and the AC is a lot better, that has never been the case before, with 50K+ miles.

You are spot on what you have said. I would recomend everyone reads their repair order before signing it. If it is not correct have it rewritten. I always make myself available to the customer,a service advisor can miss something that may help in the diag process. In California a repair order is a legal document,I would hope it is in all 50 states. I PMd the OP but he again refused to fill in the blanks and was upset because I asked him questions.

Even when repairs are done under warranty the customer should receive a copy of the work performed... ... ... this is Corporate procedure not an option of the dealer.

I do feel for the people who get beat by the dealers,but also the dealers who get scammed.

It's a tough world out there now and I am sure true colors show when times are tough on either side of the fence.

 

[Bob4x4]

The flow test will work if done Properly, Here is a Picture of our Dual Factory Pumps, I have tested the Both Single and Dual Pressure and Volume. if the Pressure is 10psi with Both pumps it will produce 110 GPH @ I turned the valve to create 4psi and it Pump 105 GPH Both times was 10 minute duration with new filter installed. So I did 1 pump for 10 minutes, Guess what @10 psi 50 GPH @ 4psi 50 GPH. The CP3 does not need any type of pressure, it needs Volume. Now to go to the extreme Yes you may gain some HP @ 20psi or higher but you will need to be in the 650 range to get any benefit.



NEVER LEAVE THE DEALERSHIP WITHOUT DOCUMENTATION, Demand it from the service writer. they may claim it's warranty work, but demand it any ways, If they say it's not necessary call the Local police. I am sure He or She will document your concerns.

Hey,we agree on something :-laf

Congrats on bringing another option to the fuel pump issue. In another thread you were searching for a jumper harness for the pump. Carter ships one with the pumps with a Part # 888-541 if that helps any